Iowa Girl’s Cookie Stand Results in 911 Calls From Neighbors

A 10-year-old eastern Iowa girl who had been operating a cookie stand got quite a surprise after neighbors called police three different times, without warning.

Savannah Watters of Cedar Falls had been selling flavored water and cookies for about five weeks when police arrived to talk to her. Apparently, Savannah's cookie/water stand, at the corner of North Union Road and Paddington Drive, was so popular that neighbors were concerned about the increased traffic.

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Kara Watters, Savannah's mom, is a former baker who was making all of the cookies. She must make great ones. Savannah sold $250 in cookies on one day! Kara told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier everything seemed to be going great:

No one had talked to me about anything, they just took it upon themselves and called 911. The police show up to talk to my daughter... we come to find out yesterday they (the neighbors) ended up calling 911. What they were saying is they didn’t like the traffic turning around.

There were three calls to police all within five days, beginning July 27. One was for selling without an adult present. The other calls were about traffic-related concerns. One of the calls came from Melissa Winberg, who lives nearby. She called police because,

We’ve had too many people coming in that we don’t know. My daughter was in our driveway riding her bike, and a car pulled in and almost hit her. We had three semis, a dump truck and four cars parked along the road. To be honest, if her mom wants to open a cookie shop, there are other ways of doing it than making her 10-year-old daughter sit on the corner for seven hours a day.

Savannah herself disputes the "seven hours a day." She says,

Every day for a couple hours I would bring my wagon and go down to the end of the street and sell stuff. I enjoyed it a lot, so then I wanted to have a cookie shop with my mom ’cause it’s always been my dream to do that. I just wish that I could’ve just kept staying there.

Summer isn't over yet and neither are Savannah's sales. She can still sell them, but now just from her driveway. Something tells me sales will be brisk.